Deleting your Facebook status

Have you posted a Facebook status, immediately regretted it and taken it down in hope that no one has seen it?

This is the question I recently posed on Facebook using the questions tool. Almost 30 people took the time to answer and the overwhelming response is, yes! In fact, 21 people admitted to taking down something they posted because they regretted posting it in the first place. One person added he’d done it more times than he’d care to admit.

Five people said they’d never done it. Another respondent said that she’d taken down a status update when she’d noticed a typo, but only to repost it later.

Social network conversations are just like those that we have in ‘real life’. Most of us have said or done something that we’d later wished we rather hadn’t. Such is life. It’s usually fine for individuals to take down content when this happens.

Brands, however should definitely think twice. It’s very important to be seen to be transparent and to be ‘keeping it real’ in social media. So fixing a typo is usually going to be ok. Taking down a negative comment or changing the meaning or nature of a status update might not. The potential backlash is probably not worth the risk.